torches that can't be raffled,
phones, fleeting objects,
a chaplin film,
but the chaplin that passes by la mágica
and reminds us that it is a bookstore.
objects!
flying objects that fall from a sky without foodstuffs!
objects that fly through the air
crashing against memories!
notes taken in a 100 by 35 mile cell!
poems! gutted gators!

the moon fits from san juan to mayagüez,
even when it’s puertorriqueña and minisculely immense,
even when i want to kill myself in exchange for an island,
but ay they need me! ay they need you!

(((tell me gringuita, where do you hide your heart, that poisoned apple?
who edits your velvet face, your invented day like a straightened wake, bookmarks between two pages named river and sky, coast and house, rain and drought?)))

cannibals, this is a call to action!
let’s devour the hearts of our benefactors!
breadless, let’s cook the thin fingers of the humanitarians
for whom we are a crisis!
let’s drown the colonizers, even if blue and red crosses
hang from their chests in hospitals without saviors, or lights,
with faithless nuns that wordfill death!
the help we need is freedom!

the añasco bridge crosses me
because i am water,
because i am contaminated
and i contaminate white and sweet
friends,
institutional walls,
aha aha thank you.
miradero is surrounded by ruttings.
the most traffic jam traffic jam jams down
from the naked branches.
i can’t help loving my people with the fever
of one sick and without meds,
in a hospital of san juan,
in a bed, in a house
on some block of some town
that screams like i scream,
let’s devour the colony!
let’s vomit screams
with a tempested terror!

ay but call abuela.
call today if you can get a signal,
or enter at night through a dream.
tell me you are alive.
resuscitate me.
i want to hug you.
i want to grow wings
and fly to your nest,
up there
where the water can't reach us.